1) MOOD: The atmosphere that pervades a literary work with the intention of evoking a certain emotion or feeling from the audience. The emotion that the author wants the reader to feel while reading a novel.

2) THEME:A theme is an author’s insight about life. It is the main idea or universal meaning, the lesson or message of a literary work. A theme may not always be explicit or easy to state, and different interpreters may disagree. Common literary themes involve basic human experiences such as: adventure; alienation; ambition; anger; betrayal; coming-of-age; courage; death; the testing of faith; overcoming fear; jealousy; liberation; love; loyalty; prejudice; the quest for an ideal; struggling with fate; truth-seeking; vengeance

4) IRONY:Using a word or situation to mean the opposite of its usual or literal meaning, usually done in humor, sarcasm or disdain; e.g. "It's as easy as lying." A contradiction between what something appears to mean and what it really means. Rainsford told Whitney, "Who cares how a jaguar feels?" and he ended up in the jaguar's position. Another irony is that Zaroff says he tries to be civilized, but he turned out to hunt humans

5) AUTHOR'S PURPOSE - the reason the author has written a piece of literature. The writer may try to inform, persuade, entertain, or express an opinion. The writer’s primary goal influences how the writer presents the information.6) SETTING - The time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a situation occurs. Settings include the background, atmosphere or environment in which characters live and move, and usually include physical characteristics of the surroundings. We get a sense of the world in which this story takes place from a variety of details. Richard Connell provides an ominous setting typical of the Gothic genre. Horrible sounds and dismal sights fill the background of this story, and the details become more frightening and typical of both the horror and action-adventure genres as the story progresses.

7) FLASHBACK/FLASH-FORWARD : A memory or event that a specific character in a story reflects on. ​A narrative technique that allows a writer to present past events during current events, in order to provide background for the current narration. Flash-forward is a literary device in which the plot goes ahead of time i.e. a scene that interrupts and takes the narrative forward in time from the current time in a story. Generally, a flash-forward represents expected or imagined events in the future interjected in the main plot revealing the important parts of the story that are yet to occur.

8) FORESHADOWING:Hints of future things to come through unusual circumstances in the present. Clues that reveal future events or a character’s true colors. An example of this is where Rainsford tells Whitney that they are lucky to be the hunters and not the huntees. Rainford did become the huntee. Another is when Zaroff tells Rainsford that Ivan is savage, like all his race, and Zaroff turns out to be savage too.

9) CAUSE & EFFECT- The events in a story are connected by a chain of causes and effects. One event causes another, which causes another, and so on. A cause is the reason something happens. An effect is the result. In Ray Bradbury's short story “A Sound of Thunder,” the whole story is about how one event (stepping on a prehistoric butterfly) causes another and another, and another, and . . .

10) CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER - Determining when an event occurred in a story. Place the following events from Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game in the order in which they appear in the short story.

____ Ivan holds a gun and aims it at Rainsford’s heart. ____ One of Zaroff’s best dogs is killed in the Burmese tiger pit. ____ Zaroff finds Rainsford hiding in the tree, but leaves him alone for another night’s hunt. ____ While swimming to the island, Rainsford hears “an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror.” ____ The general decides not to hunt with Rainsford, but actually to hunt him. ____ Ivan is killed by the trap involving the knife and the young sapling. ____ The general shows Rainsford exactly how he gets ships to crash on the island. ____ Zaroff is injured by the Malay Man-Catcher. ____ The cape buffalo cracked General Zaroff’s skull. ____ Zaroff is under the impression that Rainsford is dead.

11) PLOT: Plot is the series of related events that make up a story or drama. Like links in a chain, each event hooks our curiosity and pulls us forward to the next event. Plots are usually built in four major parts. Basic Situation/Exposition - Complications - Climax - Resolution

a. Introduction or Exposition - setting, characters, main conflicts are introduced to the reader; this is the beginning of a novel or story and may be short or long, but is always flat (little action or emotion).b. Rising Action (Complication) - the round characters are developed, the conflicts are increased and acted out in many ways, motives are introduced, things happen; generally, the major part of a novel or story.c. Climax - the "high point" of a story in which the major conflicts erupt in some kind of final showdown (fight, argument, violent or physical action, very tense emotional moment...); at the end of the climax, the "winner" will be clear (there is not always a winner!).d. Falling Action - what events immediately follow the climax; a kind of "cleaning up."e.Resolution - where everything ends; the reader may have some sense of "closure" or may be asked to think about what might come next; in fairy tales, the Happy Ending; in some novels, you will read about the characters many years later.

12) Ambiguity:the possibility of more than one meaning. In literature, an author may deliberately use ambiguity to produce subtle or multiple variations in meaning. For example, the word game in the title of the story "The Most Dangerous Game" is deliberately ambiguous as is the end of the story.

13) Symbolism:A DEVICE IN LITERATURE WHERE AN OBJECT REPRESENTS AN IDEA. In Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor's family crest and motto reflect the fact that they will tolerate no insult and will punish anyone who insults the family. This is a symbol of Montresor's frame of mind and of his ultimate intention.

14) Allegory:an extended metaphor; it is a story that makes sense on the literal level, but also, through the totality of its plot, characters, and conflict, it provides another figurative meaning. There are twopossible allegories in this story: one, the eternal conflict between the unimaginative man (Fortunato orPoe's real life father John Allan) and the creative artist (Montresor or Poe himself); and two, thedescent of the mind from the light of knowledge, hope, and order into the darkness of despair,ignorance, chaos, and even hell.

15) Unreliable Narrator:one who gives his or her own understanding of a story, instead of theexplanation and interpretation the author wishes the audience to obtain. This type of action tends toalter the audience’s opinion of the conclusion. Poe uses the classic "unreliable narrator" technique in his short story The Cask of Amontillado, of which he is the master. Montresor is completely emotionless, relating the story of a horrifying crime of his own commission.

17) ALLITERATION: A literary device which creates interest by the recurrence of initial consonant sounds of different words within the same sentence, e.g.: the "s" and "h" sounds in: “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14b). Shakespeare uses alliteration liberally, e.g.: "malicious mockery" (HAMLET, 1.2); "Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brief" (MND, 3.1) The repetition calls attention to the phrase and fixes it in the reader's mind, and so is useful for emphasis as well as art.

18) HYPERBOLE: From the Greek; pron.: high-PURR-beh-lee. Exaggeration for effect; e.g. "When sorrows come, they come not single but in battalions" (Hamlet, 4.5) I am so hungry I could eat a horse. I am so tired I could sleep for a year.

19) STYLE- MANY THINGS ENTER INTO THE STYLE OF A WORK: THE AUTHOR’S USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, DICTION, SOUND, EFFECTS, AND OTHER LITERARY DEVICES.

20) DICTION- AN AUTHOR’S CHOICE OF WORDS. SINCE WORDS HAVE SPECIFIC MEANINGS, AND SINCE ONE’S CHOICE OF WORDS CAN AFFECT FEELINGS, A WRITER’S CHOICE OF WORDS CAN HAVE GREAT IMPACT IN A LITERARY WORK.

21) PARADOX- A SITUATION OR A STATEMENT THAT SEEMS TO CONTRADICT ITSELF, BUT ON A CLOSER INSPECTION, DOES NOT.

22) PERSONIFICATION- A FIGURE OF SPEECH IN WHICH SOMETHING NONHUMAN IS GIVEN HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS.

23) IMAGERYIS USED IN LYRICS WRITING TO APPEAL TO ANY OR ALL OF ONE'S SENSES. TYPICALLY WRITERS USE VISUAL IMAGERY IN THEIR MUSIC LYRICS, BUT THIS ISN'T ALWAYS THE CASE AS AUDITORY IMAGERY IS ALSO FREQUENTLY USED FOLLOWED BY WORDS AND PHRASES THAT APPEAL TO THE OTHER SENSES AS WELL. BE CREATIVE AND SEE WHAT WORKS BEST IN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR OWN SONG.

24) ALLUSION - A REFERENCE IN ONE LITERARY WORK TO A CHARACTER OR THEME FOUND IN ANOTHER LITERARY WORK.

25) ONOMATOPOEIA - A LITERARY DEVICE WHERE THE SOUND OF A WORD ECHOES THE SOUND IT REPRESENTS. THE WORDS “SPLASH”, “KNOCK”, AND “ROAR” ARE EXAMPLES.

26) Figurative Languageis when you describe something by comparing it with something else.

27) POINT OF VIEW: The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision, from which the story unfolds. Point of view governs the reader's access to the story. Many narratives appear in the first person (the narrator speaks as "I" and the narrator is a character in the story who may or may not influence events within it). Another common type of narrative is the third-person narrative (the narrator seems to be someone standing outside the story who refers to all the characters by name or as he, she, they, and so on). When the narrator reports speech and action, but never comments on the thoughts of other characters, it is the dramatic third person point of view or objective point of view. The third-person narrator can be omniscient--a narrator who knows everything that needs to be known about the agents and events in the story, and is free to move at will in time and place, and who has privileged access to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a single character, or at most a limited number of characters. Finally, there is the unreliable narrator (a narrator who describes events in the story, but seems to make obvious mistakes or misinterpretations that may be apparent to a careful reader). Unreliable narration often serves to characterize the narrator as someone foolish or unobservant.

28) DENOTATION: The minimal, strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary,disregarding any historical or emotional connotation

29) CONNOTATION: The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. For instance, the terms civil war, revolution and rebellion have the same denotation; they all refer to an attempt at social or political change. However, civil war carries historical connotations for Americans beyond that of revolution or rebellion. Likewise, revolution is often applied more generally to scientific or theoretical changes, and it does not necessarily connote violence. Rebellion, for many English speakers connotes an improper uprising against a legitimate authority (thus we speak about "rebellious teenagers" rather than "revolutionary teenagers"). In the same way, the words house and home both refer to a domicile, but home connotes certain singular emotional qualities and personal possession in a way that house doesn't. I might own four houses I rent to others, but I might call none of these my home, for example. Much of poetry involves the poet using connotative diction that suggests meanings beyond "what the words simply say."

30) A PRIMARY SOURCE is typically an actual literary work (a play, a poem, a novel or short story) or actual historical documents related to the cultural background of that work or the author's life.

31) A SECONDARY SOURCE is typically material written about those primary sources by professional scholars (a biography, a book of critical essays, an entry in a specialist encyclopedia, an article in a peer-reviewed journal or from a database of such articles). An educational resource is non-peer-reviewed material--often summarized, simplified, or otherwise designed to introduce or explain materials to students or the general public. Educational materials include teachers' handouts and outlines, general encyclopedia articles, guides and summaries, book and play reviews, abstracts of longer works, and 99.9% of literary webpages.

32) FICTION - any imagined and invented literary composition fashioned to entertain and possibly instruct. While fiction makes its readers think, its primary purpose is to make its readers feel. The most common elements of fiction are: point of view, characters, conflict, plot, and setting. The term is usually applied to novels and short stories, but drama, epic, fable, fairy tale, folklore, verse, and parable also contain fictional elements. Example: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fictional account of the manipulation of the historical record for nationalist aims and manipulation of power.

33) Personality From Dialogue - Zaroff was telling Rainsford that life was for the strong, and that he (Zaroff) was strong, so why should he not be able to use his gift. To me, it seemed that Zaroff was a person used to getting his way, spoiled, in a sense. It also seemed that Zaroff bores easily, because he told Rainsford how he bored of hunting even large animals because they had only instinct. Indirect characterization through dialogue. ​

Language Conventions (Parts of Speech)​Noun: The part of speech that names a person, place, thing, or idea. The following words are nouns: child,town,granite,kindness,government,elephant, and Taiwan. In sentences, nouns generally function as subjects or as objects

Pronoun: A word that takes the place of a noun. She,herself,it, and this are examples of pronouns. If we substituted pronouns for the nouns in the sentence “Please give the present to Karen,” it would read “Please give it to her.”

Adjective: part of speech that describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives are usually placed just before the words they qualify: shy child, blue notebook, rotten apple, four horses, another table.

Preposition: A part of speech that indicates the relationship, often spatial, of one word to another. For example, “She paused at the gate”; “This tomato is ripe for picking”; and “They talked the matter over head to head.” Some common prepositions are at,by,for,from,in,into,on,to, and with.

Verb: A word that represents an action or a state of being. Go,strike,travel, and exist are examples of verbs. A verb is the essential part of the predicate of a sentence. The grammatical forms of verbs include number, person, and tense.

Direct Object: A noun, pronoun, or group of words serving as the receiving end of an action, such as the ball in “Tabitha hit the ball.” A direct object can be a word, phrase, or clause: “Sam chose Rusty to play shortstop”; “I will never understand why he came home.”

Indirect Object: A noun, pronoun, or group of words naming something indirectly affected by the action of a verb: “She showed me some carpet samples”; “The agent handed the Prentice family their tickets.” ‡ Indirect objects can often take or suggest the preposition to. For example, “He showed (to) me the book.”

Participial Phrase: The verb form that combines with an auxiliary verb to indicate certain tenses.The present participle is formed by adding -ing to the infinitive; it indicates present action: “The girl is swimming. The past participle usually ends in -ed; it indicates completed or past action: “The gas station has closed”; Participles may also function as adjectives: “Your mother is a charming person”; Spoken words cannot be revoked

Compound Sentence: A sentence that contains at least two independent clauses, often joined by conjunctions: “Dr. Watson explained his theory, and Sherlock Holmes listened quietly.”

Conjunction: A word that joins words or groups of words. There are three kinds of conjunctions: coordinating, correlative, and subordinating. Coordinating conjunctions include and,but,or,not,yet,for, and so. Correlative conjunctions include the words in the pairs either/or, both/and, and neither/nor. Subordinating conjunctions begin subordinate clauses and join them to the rest of the sentence: “She didn’t learn the real reason until she left the valley

Gerund: A form of a verb that ends in -ing and operates as a noun in a sentence: “Thinking can be painful.”

Infinitive: the simple or dictionary form of a verb: walk,think,fly,exist. Often the word to marks a verb as an infinitive: “to walk,” “to think,” “to fly,” “to exist.”

Appositive: An appositive is a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause which follows a noun or pronoun and renames or describes the noun or pronoun. A simple appositive is an epithet like Alexander the Great. Appositives are often set off by commas.

Independent Clause: A clause that can stand alone as a sentence. The following sentence consists of two independent clauses joined by but: “The farmers complained of the low price of food, but the office workers did not complain.”

A Subordinate Clause is introduced by a subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun. It depends on the rest of the sentence for its meaning. It does not express a complete thought, so it does not stand alone. It must always be attached to a main clause that completes the meaning. Subordinate clauses normally act as single part of speech. They can be either noun clauses, adjective clauses, or adverb clauses.

Predicate:The part of a sentence that shows what is being said about the subject. The predicate includes the main verb and all its modifiers. In the following sentence, the italicized portion is the predicate: “Olga’s dog was the ugliest creature on four legs.”

Predicate Nominatives = P.N.A predicate nominative is a noun (naming word) or a pronoun (a word used in place of a noun) that is the same as the subject of the sentence. It explains or identifies something about the subject.P.N.Ex. Ms. Hayes is our teacher. Our teacher is Ms. Hayes.The predicate nominative and the subject can be inverted and the sentence will retain its meaning. This is a way to test for the predicate nominative. Predicate nominatives always follow linking verbs.

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